


Mr Bow Tie

by TabithaJean



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Light Angst, Post-Movie: The X-Files: I Want To Believe (2008), Scully's doing well for herself, but happy overall, yay!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabithaJean/pseuds/TabithaJean
Summary: Scully finds an old toy belonging to William when searching in the attic for some medical books and allows herself a little moment.
Relationships: Dana Scully/William | Jackson Van De Kamp
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Mr Bow Tie

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation on Tumblr with ScullylovesQueequeg about how we hope Scully finds proper and meaningful satisfaction elsewhere in her life, and that her decision to give William up may not have lastingly bad impact on her life.

She finds him in a box in the attic as she searches for her old medical books. His fawn coloured fur is still fresh, and he offers his new golden glint to her as a gift. A long-forgotten whiff of her Georgetown apartment hits her before his scent settles into the stale mustiness of neglected memories. Mr Bow Tie: so named because he wears a bow tie, and in the throes of early motherhood, she had devoted her imagination towards shadowy men with invisible threats rather than towards appropriately naming her son’s toys.

She buries her nose into his soft head, but her son doesn’t linger there. Mr Bow Tie, a gift from her mother, had sat in the corner of William’s cot and in the play pen while she cooked. William had just started to reach for him, had just learned how to sit up and choose his own toys.

The amputation of William from her life had been severe and definite. Her veins were ligated, tight and pulsating with loss. For months she carried a ghost baby, whose cries she woke to in the night, her breasts bleeding their nourishment in grief.

That grief is but a shadow now: an intellectual idea rather than a jailor holding her hostage. Atrophy ceased years ago. She studies Mr Bow Tie’s face and huffs to herself, a fond smile on her lips. William would be nine, and she doesn’t presume to guess anything about him. The sports he plays, the colour of his hair (still percolating when they had said goodbye), whether he’d inherited either height or pedantry, none of that is hers to know or even imagine. Her choice, her only choice given the additional context in which she reunited with Mulder, was to offer him the chance at a life with mundane stability, where the only fears he needed to learn were the so-called acts of god.

A stray thought of her joint grant application interrupts her mediation, and she shifts gears. Excitement swims through her bloodstream with easy confidence as she considers the approaching submission deadline. Her work is good. She knows this. The grant would mean she can continue her partnership with Georgetown University, making use of their testing facilities and manpower. Her collaboration with Dr Butler has produced new research towards mitigating the deterioration of motor skills among patients with Sandhoff disease.

Her collaboration has been a focal point for the last three years. The shock of intellectual stimulation had been like diving into a clear, cold lake, and the frantic passion of the work has propelled her forwards. She is once again delving into the unknown to shine clarity in the known, but rather than looking at the stars to provide an answer, she works now on a single cellular level and finds there a whole universe.

Mr Bow Tie is packed back in the box and stored safely among photo albums and school report cards. Scully climbs back down the ladder, her mind preoccupied with impact statements and hypotheses. Some three hours away, Jackson van de Kamp catches the last batter out in his Little League game, to the proud cheers of his parents.


End file.
